The condensed homotopy type of a scheme

Abstract

We study a condensed version of the \'etale homotopy type of a scheme, which refines both the usual \'etale homotopy type of Friedlander-Artin-Mazur and the pro\'etale fundamental group of Bhatt-Scholze. In the first part of this paper, we prove that this condensed homotopy type satisfies descent along integral morphisms and that the expected fiber sequences hold. We also provide explicit computations, for example, for rings of continuous functions. A key ingredient in many of our arguments is a description of the condensed homotopy type using the Galois category of a scheme introduced by Barwick-Glasman-Haine. In the second part, we focus on the fundamental group of the condensed homotopy type in more detail. We show that, unexpectedly, the fundamental group of the condensed homotopy type of the affine line $\mathbf{A}^1_{\mathbf{C}}$ over the complex numbers is nontrivial. Nonetheless, its Noohi completion recovers the pro\'etale fundamental group of Bhatt-Scholze. Moreover, we show that a mild correction, passing to the quasiseparated quotient, fixes most of this group's quirks. Surprisingly, this quotient is often a topological group.